Pentagrams adorn a great deal of Legion’s imagery and its lyrics could best be described as misanthropic. But for the Columbus metal quintet, fire and brimstone do not define who they are.

“I want people to see that you don’t have to be some lovey-dovey pop band to be a friendly guy,” said Alex Heiberger, Legion’s 18-year-old guitarist. “We’re all the nicest of dudes and we play some of the meanest music in Columbus right now.”

Legion defines its music as “death metal,” a subgenre of metal that puts a great deal of emphasis on technicality and heaviness. The band recently released the EP “Bottom Feeder” on iTunes and in CD format, and, with titles such as “Adversary of Humanity” and “Invalidation,” the content should come as no surprise.

“I only write when I’m in a bad mood,” said Michael Guilford, Legion’s 19-year-old vocalist and lyricist. “I use it like a stress release, I guess. I have a really bad temper with everything, so I usually take it out when I write.”

There is little doubt that “Bottom Feeder” is a furious record. Heavily distorted electric guitar and bass assault the listener with riffs that could best be described as atonal and percussive, and disturbing and devilish vocals lament the failures of mankind. The drums are the real meat of the record, however, with emphasis placed on the heavy, low-end sound that the band creates.

The EP was recorded and produced entirely by Kevin Rutherford, the band’s drummer. The sound plays in a way similar to most modern metal records, but the guitars and bass take a backseat to the drums and vocals, a move that Rutherford acknowledges as a risk.

“I wanted more of the vocals coming out and the drums coming out,” Rutherford said. “You can still hear the guitars but you’ll be able to follow the drums more. On a lot of recordings, you lose a lot of drum fills and cymbal parts.”

Legion is a young band in every sense. The average age of its members is 18, and the band has been around since January 2009. Their first few months found them in a scene that largely did not care about their style of metal music.

“When we first started, it was really hard because Columbus wasn’t really about metal,” Guilford said.

But things started to pick up after the band released its first EP, “This is the End,” and began hitting it off in Columbus. Their fan base steadily increased– and so did their concerts.

“One thing I really think that’s paid off for us is the fact that we are, in my opinion, so much different than every other band in this Columbus music scene because we’re out there doing the heavier-type sound,” Heiberger said. “Everybody else is trying to do the flashy music, and we try to steer away from that, and it’s really benefited us a lot because we are our own band. If kids want to hear that in Columbus, they are going to come see that.”

The flashy music Heiberger mentions is a reference to the synth-heavy, Auto-Tune-laden style that has become prominent in Columbus within recent years. Legion cites this as a reason for the increasingly competitive nature of the music scene in Columbus, as many bands attempt to one-up each other in hopes of being signed to a major label and gaining national attention.

“Everyone is like, ‘Man, Columbus is a hot spot!’ Which you would think it is, but not a lot of kids come out (to concerts), and the kids that do come out are usually just trash-talking every other band,” Heiberger said.

“What we want to do is just be cool with everyone,” Rutherford said. “Even if we don’t like your music, we respect what you’re doing. Anyone that’s getting up there and making music is just doing the same thing we’re trying to do, so it’s respectable.”

But Guilford said this level of respect isn’t always mutual. When the band was first starting out, its imagery and lyrics earned it a reputation of being “all about Atheism and 666,” which put it at odds with a great deal of the Columbus metal scene.

“A lot of us in the band, we’re kinda atheist,” he said. “We don’t push our beliefs on other people. We don’t like to have other people’s beliefs pushed on us. We don’t flaunt it around when we play.”

The band members seem split, however, on whether their art and lyrics are simply an image, or something that they abide by.

“I love to come and just be extremely rude and obnoxious and over-the-top on stage, but I love to just talk to everybody afterwards and try to be the nicest guy I can be,” Heiberger said.

But Chris Dragics, the second guitarist and chief songwriter for Legion, seems to disagree with that idea.

“Of course we’re going to be nice to people at shows, but that makes it seem like our music is fake, like we’re doing it for the image,” he said. “I’d say we all have hate in us, that’s why we do what we do.”